Breaking the Cycle of Discouragement

For my third blog I thought I would tackle a bit of a tougher issue, troublesome kids in the classroom. I got thinking about this issue after my group in EDUC 8P19 had to present a case study where the main subject is the victim of neglect at home and has their mom eventually show up to the school drunk where she goes on to tell the teacher that she doesn't really care much about seeing her son's work. It made me really wonder how I'd help the student in my classroom if I had that same situation happen to me when I become a teacher. It's easy to talk about doing the right thing when we're looking at it from the point of view of students, but it's definitely harder to deal with when you know you're trying to work to improve the student's behaviour after years of neglect from a bad parent and possibly bad teachers as well.

One idea that stood out to me when we were talking about how to deal with students like this was breaking the cycle of discouragement. From a young age many students who are neglected at home or in other ways disadvantaged get stuck in a cycle where they do poorly in school which leads to poor self-esteem, which then leads to them believing that they're dumb or otherwise incapable of improving themselves. Negative consequences for bad marks just reinforce this and lead to kids giving up on the idea of school before they see what they're capable of doing.

https://d26aybd97pahbz.cloudfront.net/shard0/wblob/1961FC19B74D1A/2F/1BB/hCrUnG5sjV4Aq2BOdNhIIGDS3_WoiAJ8meyEdvzfu-8/graphic2-300x273.jpg

I saw this a few times when I did my placement at a poorer school in St. Catharines. Some kids would rather not try instead of risk trying a task and potentially failing at it. Their self-esteem is so low that they don't believe they can do even some simple tasks that they think it's just better to not even try. Then when they get a bad mark because they didn't try very hard it just reinforces their assumption that they're dumb. This isn't helped by the culture of some kids who think it's cool to not try hard in school and to slack off instead. Bullying can be a huge factor in this as well because if their peers are telling them that they're dumb, they might believe them and not only will they not want to learn, but they won't want to come to school either. But it's up to us as teachers to give students the tools they need to break out of this cycle of discouragement.

http://amybscher.com/wp-content/uploads/Be-positive-affirmation.jpg

In these two articles they show how we can do this by reinforcing all of the positive traits that we see in those students that struggle in our classrooms. If they're good in English but bad in math, a teacher can look for the strategies they use to help them succeed in English class and help them adapt those strategies to math or other subjects where they're struggling a bit more. This also relates to the idea of a fixed mindset that we've looked at in EDUC 4P19. Give kids the confidence that they can improve on their abilities instead of letting them get fixed on the idea that they're "dumb" or "can't do math" and we'll see an improvement in our students both inside and outside the classroom.

Thanks for reading!

Dylan Maguire


References

Conrath, J. (2012, October 7). Working with Discouraged or Defeated Learners. Retrieved November 18, 2015.

Ellis, J., Hart, S. & Small-McGinley, J. (In Press). Encouraging the discouraged: Students’ views for elementary classrooms. Analytic Teaching, 22(1), 2001